The 15th annual conference of the European Trade Study Group (ETSG) will be hosted by Birmingham Business School from 12 to 14 September 2013, bringing together more than 300 participants from Europe, USA, Japan, China, India and beyond.

The University of Birmingham has made an impressive 15 place rise to 62nd in this year's QS World University Rankings, cementing its position in the top 100 universities globally and placing it 10th in the UK.

The latest entries in the 'Birmingham Business School Discussion Paper Series' are now available. Papers are submitted from academics across all departments of the Business School, covering a wide range of research topics.

This month Birmingham Business School is the host of two international conferences; the Comparative International Governmental Accounting Research conference and the European Trade Study Group conference.

The 2013/14 Barclays Premier League season starts this Saturday and a major analysis of referee's decisions in the league has shown that officials are around 15% more likely to book foreign players who are from the same background as the most sizable ethnic minority groups in the UK.

Dr Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay discusses the tension between senior police officers and their elected masters that spilled over into the political arena after reports of chief constables being bullied out of their jobs and complaints of misuse of office by some of the new class of Police and Crime Commissioners.